Music and poetry are the arts most difficult to transfer to cinema. Peter Weir, an imaginative Australian writer-director, has accomplished this most successfully in the film Incredible Floridas. It derives its title from a line in a poem by Arthur Rimbaud: "I've struck, I tell you, incredible floridas" [the Spanish word for "full of flowers, choice or select"].

The film is built around the musical homage paid the 19th century French poet by 41-year-old Richard Meale, a leader in contemporary music in Australia. In his own words Meale reveals his early interest in Rimbaud's poetry, his fascination with the poet, and his many attempts over a period of years to put his feeling for Rimbaud into music.

Through uncluttered cinematic devices and with this music as background, the viewer becomes intimately acquainted with both Meale the composer, and Rimbaud the poet, in a linkage though 100 years apart in...